Lack avocado knowledge? There’s a new AI agent for that

In honor of National Avocado Day on July 31, Avocados From Mexico launched its own AI-powered answer engine, ** AVO.AI**. The custom chatbot is designed to help avocado nubes find answers to avocado-related queries, particularly in relation to kitchen use, storage, nutrition and recipe questions.

Instead of integrating another AI platform into its marketing, Avocados From Mexico is launching the produce industry’s first custom answer engine. envisioned as a “knowledgeable kitchen sidekick” according to a press release. AI answers are sourced from the brand’s digital vault of educational content, as opposed to pulling responses from the open web.

"At Avocados From Mexico, we’ve always been obsessed with what’s next," said Alvaro Luque, President and CEO of Avocados from Mexico. "We've spent years using AI to bring unexpected, fun experiences to our fans, and AVO.AI is our next big leap. This goes beyond selling more avocados and puts the focus on making your kitchen life easier and a lot more inspired. By adding this smart, hands-on tool to our digital lineup, we're continuing to lead the category by redefining how people think about and enjoy avocados."

Custom Branded AI

As marketing, AI, and social media all begin to intersect, AVO.AI signifies a shift in brand-owned media.

"In building AVO.AI, we created something truly unprecedented: the first-ever AI tool dedicated exclusively to a single produce item," said Kristian Bottini, CEO of 270B, the Texas-based marketing agency behind the project. "The technology is engineered for genuine dialogue, intuitively understanding consumer intent and context to deliver helpful, conversational answers. By anchoring the AI within a curated, brand-approved vector database, we ensured AVO.AI acts as a highly responsible, trusted 'produce expert' that consumers can reliably turn to for all their culinary inspiration."

Advice from AVO.AI comes directly from the brand, not editorial articles, blogs, or even books aggregated in searches or other AI platforms. This helps bypass bad advice and junk articles that AI searches often yield.

The consumer tool is free to use, but of course, offers value to the brand: Data. Insight about what consumers are asking about can further help the brand market to current and potential customers, and shape future content.

Sample questions for AVO.AI include how to make guacamole, how to prevent a sliced avocado from going bad, and the safest way to remove an avocado pit, all of which are likely known and remembered answers from avocado enthusiasts.

Avocados, AI, and Water Use

Avocados are becoming increasingly pivotal to the American diet, with avocado consumption tripling in America since the year 2000. Now, Americans consume over 3 billion pounds of avocado each year. That’s a lot of avocado. And a lot of resources to grow, harvest, and transport avocados from Mexico into the U.S.

I asked AVO.AI how much water it takes to grow an avocado and was met with a bit of a murky response.

“Short answer: there isn’t a single, universal number — water needed to grow one avocado depends on climate, whether the orchard is rain-fed or irrigated, tree spacing and yield…” the platform said, further devolving into details on rainfall in Mexican regions and when irrigation is needed. For the Michoacán region, where avocados are prominent, AVO.AI shared that depending on orchard density, a single avocado could use require 145–217 gallons of water per avocado or just 39–58 gallons per avocado for the highest density avocado orchard. Still, that’s a good amount of water, especially as Mexico experiences widespread drought.

There’s ongoing debate on the extent of AI’s water usage and footprint, but all AI models use water via the data centers that host them. The proportion of water per AI inquiry or generation is a bit murky, but a 2024 Berkeley Lab report estimated that all U.S. data centers consumed about 17.4 billion gallons of water in 2023, and projected 16 billion to 33 billion gallons a year by 2028. That’s a lot of avocados that could be growing with that data center water.